Ignore Distressed South Side, Focus On ‘Golden Corridor’!

While the CTA focuses intensely on the North Side lakefront – which they call the ‘Golden Corridor‘ – vast areas of the South and West Sides continue to lack transit service and fall deeper and deeper into poverty.

Needing to show their Core Capacity project would provide a 10% increase in ridership, the CTA decided ‘fixing’ an occasional 20-30 second delay for North Side riders is the best way to achieve increased ridership.

How do you think that will work out, Chicago? Bright future?

Check out this just released “Distressed Communities” report in DNAInfo:

CHICAGO — When it comes to being “distressed,” a new study shows a stark difference between North Side neighborhoods with South Side neighborhoods.

Economic Innovation Group, a D.C.-based organization, recently released its “Distressed Communities Index,” a study that looked at over 26,000 ZIP codes across the United States, compiling factors from high school degree rates to unemployment to housing vacancies into a “distress score.”

Based on the organization’s definition of “distressed,” nearly 40 percent of Chicagoans live in distressed ZIP codes.

“Chicago is really striking,” said Kenan Fikri, ‎EIG’s manager for Research and Policy Development. “Over 1 million Chicagoans live in these distressed ZIP codes.”